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A love which overflows from fullness

The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God (edited by Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall and Gerald O’Collins) is a fascinating collection of essays from a theologically and ecumenically diverse group of scholars, including NT Wright, Gordon Fee, Jean-Noël Aletti, Sarah Coakley, Stephen T. Davis, David Brown, and others. It also includes a piece by C. Stephen Evans in which he defends a brand of kenoticism, convinced (rightly in my view) that some form of kenotic christology does most justice to the NT’s accounts of Jesus and that it is possible to provide an account of kenoticism that does not in any way abrogate the claims of Chalcedonian orthodoxy. This is precisely what Evans sets out to do in this essay.

In conversation with Stephen Davis, Ronald Feenstra and Richard Swinburne (why does he go there?), Evans proposes that God’s gracious decision to enflesh – because it is a decision fully laden with soteriological intent – is necessarily best understood as a decision to assume certain limitations. This is the shape of love. Along the way, Evans cites this beautiful passage from W.H. Vanstone, among whose many further contributions, as Jim Gordon reminded us some years back, was to ‘sell the vicarage furniture to pay for the repair of the church roof!’ (Paul Fromont also posted some good stuff from Vanstone some time back). Anyway, enough waffle, here’s the quote:

‘Trinitarian theology asserts that God’s love for his creation is not the love that is born of ‘emptiness’ … It is the love which overflows from fullness. Its analogue is the love of a family who, united in mutual love, take an orphan into the home. They do so not out of need but in the pure spontaneity of their own triumphant love. Nevertheless, in the weeks that follow, the family, once complete in itself, comes to need the newcomer. Without him the circle is now incomplete; his absence now causes anxiety: his waywardness brings concern; his goodness and happiness are necessary to those who have come to love him; upon his response depends the triumph or the tragedy of the family’s love … Love has surrendered its triumphant self-sufficiency and created its own need. This is the supreme illustration of love’s self-giving or self-emptying – that it should surrender its fullness and create in itself the emptiness of need. Of such a nature is the Kenosis of God – the self-emptying of Him Who is already in every way fulfilled’. – William Hubert Vanstone, Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense: The Response of Being to the Love of God(London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1977), 69.

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4 comments

Good stuff, sir! I’ve been working through The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis edited by John Polkinghorne and dedicated to Vanstone. Every chapter starts off with a little quote from Love’s Endeavor, Love’s Expense. I’ve gotta get this one in line for a read.

I’ll take your quote about love overflowing from fullness with me today!

I would also reserve an eager front row seat to catch you blogging through any of these three too! (The Incarnation, Love’s Endeavor, The Work of Love)… Just in the unlikely event you get “blogger’s block”!

Thanks for the encouragement Mike. I am actually contemplating the benefits of blogging through Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense, especially after spending a few hours in the book last night. While there are some sections that are less than satisfying (including the chapter ‘The Kenosis of God’), there is certainly much to commend in the book overall.

Now Jason. Don’t you go picking holes in this beautiful book. I’ve built an entire ministry on some of Vanstone’s most important insights, including the precariousness of love, the agony of love that suffers rejection, the self-expenditure and agon (i.e. costly effort)of divine love, and the purpose of our lives as the response of our whole being to the love of God. I too can find brush strokes on the canvas that don’t work – but they add to the overall masterpiece, because In Vanstone’s theology they witness to the impossibility of perfection, and the wisdom of settling for beauty.